Warmakers are having a field day with the newest battles in the Middle East and see it as an "opportunity". I went on rant yesterday in comments on Newscoma's blog (sorry about that) about the disgraced ex-House Majority leader, Newt Gingrich, who wants to push the U.S, our allies and the rest of the world into a Brand New World War, in order to generate enough fear in the U.S. that voters won't review the Republican record of failure in Congress and the Senate. His fear really isn't a world war the U.S. won't win - it's a change in the majority in Congress.
This is beyond foolish, and very nearly suicidal. Fanning the flames of war into a worldwide inferno seems to be the goal. Gingrich and others want to make this an argument about a "we must win" scenario, ignoring the number of lives such a battle would claim. and sees it as a Public Relations battle where using certain key words and phrases will induce enough Fear in the American public to embolden the U.S. into attacking more nations.
Is it a coincidence this Lust for Worldwide War arrives just as the major corporate contracts for military support in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down?
Opportunity for more contracts, for more military action to seize natural resources, for spreading political instability, which will then be used to justify more military responses in an ever increasing cycle of war.
The mistake in this logic is that it removes the focus from resolving the current warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan and undermines efforts to make resolution possible. It confuses our allies as to our goals and our committments, as they witness a lack of urgency to resolve these conflicts and a desire to spread out into a larger war. I have to wonder if this wasn't a long-developing desire.
Yes, Islamic terrorists want to fight, not talk. Yet, for us to see enemies everywhere means more soldiers are needed and more and more money. And bringing the US into a worldwide conflict is precisely the goal of those who attacked on September 11, 2001.
I'm waiting for the medical analogy to be used - sometimes you have to get sicker in order to get better.
This defeatist and self-serving line of thought will only insure spreading sickness, spreading disaster.
Sadly, the facts are so distorted and lost and the Fear is so great, I doubt the voters will respond with clarity. More and more our policies are all Reaction and not Action and any voices calling for anything else are held in contempt.
Gingrich may just get what he wants: forcing the language of war into everyone's minds.
Who benefits most from this? Perhaps the campaign to put Gingrich in the White House.
Gingrich gets my nomination as the Greatest Mediocrite of the Millenium. Certainly of the past one and perhaps of this one as well. He helped usher in the "Conservative Revolution" which indeed turned out to be the Contract on America.
ReplyDeleteHe's right about us being in a World War. In as much as we have been embroiled in one or another since the French-Indian or Seven Years War I believe it is also called, Where the dominant empires vied for control of another continent's resources.
The Cold War is, and I use the word is deliberately, a continuation of The First World War and now the interests of some Middle Eastern countries enters into the chess game.
This is first time during all this that there has been an open assault on our Constitution and the war on the working class by the Oligarchy has been so thoroughly ignored.
If it had not been for Richard Mellon Scaife, Gingrich would be back teaching in a junior college somewhere. W.S.C.C. probably.